Chapter Text
It’s really not Jon’s fault.
Damian demanded why he needed to be a part of something so beneath him as a high school football team, and he responded that his dad told him that sports are great, they’re how you learn to be passionate and be one of the team. Damian said they had a team. Hell, they ARE a team.
Jon ignored him.
Much like Damian ignores him nowadays in favour of going over plays for the team. Jon didn’t really know he’d get this into it when he joined, but he doesn’t mind at all. Jon doesn’t really plan things, but he’s usually happy to go along with however they turn out. It turns out his fiancé is an excellent coach, and being on a team is fun.In fact, the team becomes a strange imitation of a family. Jon grows into himself not unlike his father, but no matter how big he gets, he remains Team Baby. He’s small when he joins, but not that small- the team insists it’s his personality or something. He doesn’t mind. He is, in fact, Baby.
Damian’s role wasn’t so easily claimed. He didn’t even try out as a player, he was never going to respond well to taking orders from anyone but Batman. He made a space for himself as the school’s first ever “student coach” or “student aid” or some such bullshit. Jon’s pretty sure he made that up, but being Bruce Wayne’s son (along with the unreasonable donations from WE to the sports department) goes a long way, and he had a whistle and a clipboard within the week.
But, ah, Damian wasn’t much of a team player. His backlog of teams up until then consisted of the League of Assassins, the Batclan, and more recently the Titans. High school footballers weren’t quite up to Damian’s expectations. Within four weeks the members were protesting, threatening to quit, or blowing up in new and exciting ways.
Jon accepted that this was just going to be another thing to roll with, but another sharp turn changed things a bit.
The second one of the members insisted that Damian was making them do things he never could, making his demands unfair, and Jon knew things were about to take a sharp right turn. Damian narrowed his eyes at the boy dangerously- Harry, Jon thought.
“And what is it you think I can’t do?”, he asked, voice cold as ice.
That doesn’t really work on high schoolers. It’s kind of like how chess masters get beaten by total amateurs because they don’t have a technique to analyse, they’re just doing whatever. The likes of Damian don’t really register to kids. Harry flaps his arms around at the course wildly.
“Anything! All of this! You can’t expect us to do this stuff, you couldn’t run it either!”
The other boys were looking between the two in apprehension or frustration. It was about time one of them popped, but this was still Damian Wayne.
So Damian ran the course with little to no effort, and everyone sort of shut up after that. He’d earned their respect, but Jon thinks maybe that’s when they earned his, because he started trying a little harder for them.
He did get better with time and no small effort on his part. He works them hard, there’s no denying that, but he isn’t completely unreasonable anymore and he does take the team’s responses into account. Jon would never say it, but it’s definitely helped him in the field (aside from the fact that Jon has definitely seen him use field plays on patrol). Grow as a person, or something.
For the most part those on the team stick around year to year, but every now and then they gain an additional member. As such, their “coach” (the adult one stopped showing up in the first year) has to demonstrate his own ability once a year by running the hell course he puts them through. It’s probably an excuse for the team to see him in action again, or to not have to do it themselves. It seems like an excuse for something. Either way, it cements the strange bond between them more every year. It’s widely considered the best day of the season, at least among the team- a special occasion just between them.
So Damian carved out his place as the hardass from Hell, and Jon stays team Baby. This is who they are to the team.
And so, this is the lens through which they see Damian, who knows full well what Jon is capable of, run him into the ground even harder than the others. It’s not the same training as they know, but it’s a form of training nonetheless. Damian isn’t about to go easy on him just because they’re in civvies.
It becomes a well known fact that poor little Jon is the constant target of mean old Damian’s unwarranted ire. That evil, merciless bastard had singled the sweetest kid on the team out from day one like a bully and picked on him out of spite.
That stays a fact even after they reach an understanding and overcome their hostility, and it’s never been explained. Jon insists he doesn’t mind, defending Damian more often than not, which probably doesn’t help.
It’s not unlike being written into a soap opera, and they delight in playing their roles. Damian gets a kick out of the idea that Jon is poor little anything.
High school boys have few consistent themes, but one of them is high school girls. In a team of high school boys, it’s going to come up. And it does.
John (the other one, they call him Jo) is always desperate to know everything. Who’s dating who? What’s a date like? Is kissing nice? The others are accustomed to brushing him off. He hardly expects an answer anymore.
Harry’s had girls mooning after him since grade 8. He’s lots of fun, life of the party, it tracks.
Will is a huge gossip and his friends outside the team are all girls, so he’s a veritable fountain of trivial social information. He’s a great big tease about it, mostly targeting Jo, because he’s an incorrigible bastard and he’s way too easy to fuck with.
Whenever the topic comes up, Jon is red faced and avoiding attention. Especially since Damian is like, right there. So they all assume he’s a shy baby, too soft, too pure, but they’re confident that will change in a few years (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t).
Vash is quiet as ever, and amazingly, he’s the first of them to get a girlfriend. He doesn’t tell them, Will does, and they all go a bit ape shit. Vash sort of just shakes his head and smiles fondly. Even as a kid he’s pretty mature, but they can tell he’s happy about it. Her name is Aviva. Vash becomes the butt of the issue for the next lord knows how long until they all jump on the bandwagon and start dating. Like he’s the ‘expert’ or something. How is she, what do you do, etc. Jo acts like Vash has the secrets of the universe and won’t share them.
Damian admonishes them for acting childishly over something trivial, not to mention the fact that any girl in their right mind would run in the face of their pitiful advances. Fix your attitude, Helmann (John), I feel sorry for the women in your future.
“Where do you get the authority on the topic, huh?”, David demands. “You’re no more experienced that us.”
Jon shoves his head into his locker in a valiant attempt to not cackle. Besides the fact that he’s engaged to Jon, everyone knows Damian is a)bonkers rich, b)a model, and c)usually the hottest topic around school at all times, but no one admits that right now.It didn’t take long for Damian to grow into one of the coolest cats to ever step foot in West-Reeve. In fact, he might have had that going for him the second he enrolled. He’s stunning, with a foreign accent and seemingly endless intellectual ability to boot. Sharp tongued and quick witted, and everyone knows it, because he’s famous too. So the team lays off him for a little while.
Now, some of the guys are friends outside of the team and at school too, so their lives are intertwined. Girls start to become another part of that. They show up at games to cheer, some meet up with them or pick them up. They come and go, through breakups, high points, virginity losses and more. Eventually, Jon stops feeling weird about it.
Harry asks Damian once why they never hear about girls with him. He’s certainly popular enough.
Jo snorts. “You’ve met him, right? You’ve heard him speak to other humans?”
Damian gives him a cutting look.“I don’t feel the need to brag inanely about my personal life. Besides, the tabloids have enough garbage to work with as it is, there’s no point in encouraging it.”
Jo leaps on that. “Wait, so you have dated?!”
“Leave him be, John, mate, it can’t be easy being a public figure,” Will interjects, his English accent drawling. Which is notable, coming from him.
“Yeah, guys. Besides, he’s a pretty private person, so there’s no need to pry. I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly care which beautiful model the Wayne Heir is with at any given time,” Jon adds, trying to keep the smirk out of his voice. He can feel Damian’s glare, but he doesn’t look.
“Oh my god that’s true, you’ve gotta be drowning in it, dude, I bet you get around-“
“What part about let it go do you not get, Jo?”
“Tt. Suffice it to say that I am not without experience.” Jon nearly drops his shampoo. “Now, ten laps, go!”
“What?! What for?!”
“For pushing me.”
(Damian is not above abusing his power, and abuse it he does.)
They leave Jon out of it for longer than he expected, but eventually, it does come up. They all seem confused when David asks the question “What about Jonny?”, like they’d never considered it. And they all turn and look at him frowning at once like that’ll help them picture it.
Jon looks like a deer in the headlights a bit, although he’s finally got a handle on his blushing.
“M-me?”, he squeaks. He can just about hear Damian rolling his eyes.
“You know, I actually haven’t heard anything about Jon,” Will says thoughtfully, leaning against a locker. That, in and of itself, is remarkable enough to get everyone’s attention.
“Well, I mean, he’s a big boy now...” Harry notes.
“Yeah, but... he’s Jon.”
“He’s baby,” nods Kareem.
“To us, yeah, but he’s the same age as any of us. If you think about it, he should be well into it too.”
“I’m right here,” Jon huffs, kind of getting sick of being talked about like he isn’t.
“You tell us, then. You got a crush?”, Jo wheedles.
Okay, so Jon doesn’t totally have his blushing under control.
“N-no...”
Jo gasps like he just admitted to winning the lotto. Vash rolls his eyes, and Damian’s got to be smirking, not that Jon’s about to check.
“Normally I’d say that means yes, but this is Jon we’re talking about, so it could mean anything,” Will states flatly.
“No way man, he lit up like a Christmas tree! Tell us Jonny! Tell! Tell! Spill us the deets!”
Harry grins cockily, shifting so one hip juts out. “Y’know, I’m on Jo’s side.”
“I feel like I have to vet this girl. Like, make sure she’s good enough for our little Jonny,” Jack says.
John continues his ‘tell us’ chant, which a few members join until just about all of them are cheering in good jest, drowning out Jon who’s grinning widely but still blushing and trying to get them to shut up. He’s yelling and gesturing at them for ages, because he can’t tell them anything over this racket, but at this point they’re just teasing him.
“I don’t have a crush!”, he giggles out, clutching his stomach.
“We’ll find you one!”
“Aziz, get the list!”
“What are you into?”
“Pretty sure Katy—“
“NO PLEASE DON’T DO THAT!” Jon yells, red as a lobster. His hands slap over his mouth way too late. Shit.
“So you do have one!”
“No!”
“Then why?”
“C’mon, you can tell us, Jon,” David assures.
“We’ll hold Jo back,” Vash agrees.
Jon takes a big breath with wide eyes, and it’s then he realizes that Damian’s left at some point. Jon doesn’t doubt that he COULD get through this pow-wow without laughing, but why would he when he could just slip off and cackle himself silly at a wall? That bastard.
Well, then it’ll be his fault, won’t it?
Since the team’s all agreed, they’re probably just worried he’s not telling them something important. He feels guilty because he super is, but that’s how it is. But they also definitely just like being nosy. If only Damian had been present, he could’ve avoided this unfortunate exposure.
“O-okay, well... I’m sort of in a relationship.”
Absolute uproar.
Jo shakes him violently by the shoulders, but Jon can’t hear what he’s saying over the cacophony of “OOOHHH”’s in the background. Seriously, they’re acting like they just won nationals. Harry and Aziz are jumping around like headless chickens, there is yelling on all parts. Will looks like he’s just been slapped, but he’s smiling.
“Calm down, will you?! Why didn’t you yell at anyone else when they said they were seeing someone?!”
Kareem shoves Jo off of him and pulls him protectively to his chest, arms around his head like the Virgin Mary or something.
“Oh my sweet baby boy.”
“This isn’t anyone else! This is you, dipshit!”, Harry crones.
“How?!” Will chokes. “How do I not know this?!”
Once they get Jo to shut up about how he told them so, he responds. “It’s not, like, a new thing...”
“Wait, it’s a serious relationship? How long?” David asks incredulously.
Jon scratches the back of his head like the walking cliché he is and his blush deepens. This, he will pin on Damian as well. “I’ve been, uh... well we sort of... confessed, when we were- I was ten.”
Vash drops his towel. Jon hears Jack yelp from somewhere in the back and hopes he’s okay. Will does a full 360 with his hands on his head, and everyone else’s jaws drop. Jon wants to cackle. You know what, this was worth it. These guys are so dramatic, and the fact that they’re under the delusion that he’s some innocent snowflake- it’s priceless.
“Wha-ha-hat?!” Harry breathes incredulously.
“You’ve been dating this girl since you were fucking ten?!” Kareem gasps.
“What?! How?!”
“There’s no way!”
Harry starts guffawing. Full on, belly clutching, back arching, hand slapping cackling. He’s so loud the others can’t ignore him. Some of them laugh with him. Even Jon lets a giggle escape.
“Jon’s got more game than any of us! Holy shit!” A tear squeezes out of Harry’s eye as he sinks slowly to the ground, joined by Jack, and almost Will.
“Since you were ten?!” Aziz stresses.
Vash whistles, and the rest of the team breaks. Jon ends up on the floor crying with the rest of them. He thinks of it as making up for all the times he couldn’t when Damian said something funny.
Just when he’s pulling himself together he realizes they don’t even know he’s engaged and he doubles over and dies again.
“You guys don’t even know...” he wheezes. “You don’t even... know...”
“What, now you’re gonna tell us you have a kid?!” John teases, breathless. Which is so much closer to the truth than he means it that Jon nearly pisses himself laughing then and there. He can’t, he has to tell them.
“We’re engaged!”, he yells.
If the cacophony from earlier was loud, this is ear-splitting. It’s just pure chaos. Jon feels himself being pulled up from his fetal position on the floor by someone he thinks is Kareem. Everyone else is up from the ground too, screaming the way full teenage male football teams should never be allowed to. They’re jumping and screaming, eyebrows up, cheering. Fists punch the air, hands drag down amazed faces, and no one is still.
Harry picks him up like he weighs nothing and soon the entire team is physically carrying him, and through it all the noise never stops. Jon can’t help it- he laughs, he cries, he cheers along too.
Jo tries to hint at Jon being a ‘sly dog’, elbowing him and asking for his secrets. Jon says he doesn’t have any, genius.
“You have to! You got someone to date you at ten! You’re engaged!”
Jon rolls his eyes. “Relationships are easier when you love someone, Jo.”
Jo reels back. “Wowza! Shit! Listen to yourself. You can just say that shit! Like, not even worried about it! You’ve got your shit together, Jonny!”
“Whipped,” comes David’s half-hearted jeer from the back.
“Engaged at sixteen. Honestly, now that I know, that sounds like Jon,” Will clucks.
“I can’t believe it,” Aziz shakes his head.
“Jon is leagues ahead of us, as usual,” David agrees.
“I feel like a Dad. They grow up so fast. Holy shit, how does your dad feel?!”, Kareem adds.
“He tried. They all tried. They knew they couldn’t stop us,” Jon shrugs. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation with Batman. He might actually have had the better deal.
“Listen to our boy. Unreal,” Harry chuckles. “We gotta meet this girl.”
Jon goes ramrod straight, eyes shot wide as dinner plates. “No you don’t!”
“She can’t be someone from school, I would know,” Will says as if he didn’t hear.
“True. If they’ve known each other since they were ten it must be a childhood friend.”
“You can’t meet her!”, Jon squeaks again.
Harry frowns. “What? We gotta. You’re engaged to this chick, what are we just gonna not?”
“Yes! That would be great!”, Jon stresses, voice cracking. Shit shit banana split. They’re still under the impression it’s a GIRL.
Now most of them are paying attention to him.
“Cut us some slack, bro, we just found out you’re gettin’ married and we don’t even know her! We’re your team dude, we’re your boys, we gotta meet her!”, Jack calls.
“If Jack can bring fucking Tamika to practice, there is no reason you can’t bring the girl you’re gonna marry, Jon,” Kareem snickers, earning an elbow from Jack.
“No, yeah, I mean, yeah,” Jon starts eloquently, shuffling on his feet. How is he gonna get out of this? Shit. He should have just shut up. But it was so funny. He sighs nervously. “This is just, kind of a secret, you guys. I shouldn’t have even told you.”
He’s immediately shut down by protests and boos and one well-aimed paper wad.
“Bullshit, like we’re gonna tell! Hey, boys, are we gonna tell?” Harry booms, arms spread, looking around for confirmation. He’s met with fervent head shakes and adamant “of course not”’s.
“Seriously, guys. Will. No telling, okay? There’s a good reason, I promise.”
Will, in an uncharacteristic move, plants a hand on Jon’s shoulder.
“No one’ll know,” he assures.
Jon wipes a hand over the years staining his face. “Okay then... I still can’t tell you, but thanks.”
“No meeting?!” Kareem whines.
Jon makes a split second impulsive decision, fuelled by the laughing fit he’s still riding and the fact that Damian has no power over the proceedings right now, and he’s gonna be PISSED.
“N- ahh, funny thing about that,” Jon chuckles nervously. “You, um, already know them.”
“THAT’S NOT POSSIBLE,” Will cries, and that’s all Jon can makes out from the third fucking uproar in the last hour.
“Jon,” Jo whimpers, melting a little against him. “You can’t. You can’t do this.”
“YOURE GONNA LEAVE US WITH THAT?!”
“JONATHAN KENT—“
Jon laughs again, hand over his mouth, picturing his team doing absurdly serious research to try and find their baby boy’s scandalous secret lover. Damian is definitely the type you’d hide from your parents, famous or not. The image of Karim in glasses leaned over with his face an inch from some dusty old record book while Jo yells outrageous theories is enough, but then he pictures Damian walking in with his piercings and eyeliner in full Robin getup and he’s rolling on the floor.
The best part comes next practice, when the team checks with Jon quickly before racing over to inform Damian that Jonny has a secret fiancé he’s been hiding, can you believe it?!
Damian raises an eloquent eyebrow and turns to look at Jon.
“Congratulations,” he says deliberately.
Jon just recovered from yesterday’s events and at Damian’s direct eye contact it’s all coming back in full strength. He is close to bursting, or melting, or something- people should never have to hold back laughter when things are THIS FUNNY. There should be a RULE. He stomps like a disgruntled bull, trying to tamp it down.
“Congratulations?! That’s it?!”
“It hardly surprises me. Kent may suffer from a remarkable lack of competency, but he has more consideration and level headed-ness in him than the rest of you combined. He is also loyal to a fault, and it’s completely in character for him to devote himself wholly to someone at this age.”
Jon, used to Damian’s sparse praise, isn’t fazed. The rest of the team is shell-shocked. Was that a compliment? From Damian? To Jon?
Damian, a blessed emissary of sobriety, swoops in and has them running drills before any of them can process that. You can’t really think through Damian’s training sessions, so he’s effectively postponed confrontation. But the looks he levels at Jon promises a storm.